


Meine Liebe

by Lady Sarai (lady_sarai)



Category: Little Women (2019)
Genre: Canon Related, F/F, Family, Love, No Character Death, Sisters, canon adjacent, lesbians in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:47:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_sarai/pseuds/Lady%20Sarai
Summary: Jo waits for her to finish reading her manuscript.  Her opinion is the one that matters most of all.
Relationships: Josephine March/Woman
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Meine Liebe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophiahelix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix/gifts).



> Thank you so much to my beta reader and to my recipient for a lovely prompt! I hope you enjoy. Happy Yuletide!

Jo paces, chewing on a thumbnail as she crosses the room. The floorboards squeak under her feet when she gets close to the window, and as if the noise is a cue, she turns on her heel and heads back across the room toward the bookshelves. Her eyes travel to the woman sitting cross-legged on the bed, but they skirt away almost immediately. She wants to watch, she wants to _see_ the reactions as she reads, but at the same time, she can’t bear it. She reaches the edge of the rug and turns again, this time with a sigh.

Jo repeats this ritual twice more before she is interrupted just as she steps on the squeaky floorboard.

“If you do not stop your pacing and your sighing, _I_ will stop my reading until you leave the room.”

Jo rushes to the bed, hiking up her skirts in a very unladylike manner to climb up and crawl across the quilt. “You have to tell me what you think! You can’t send me away, I have to know what your reactions are.”

Dark eyes look back at her, sparkling with amusement even as her mouth remains fixed in a stern line. “How can you know what my reactions are if you refuse to look at me, or if you persist in pacing and sighing so that I keep losing my spot?”

Jo leans in and presses a kiss to the edge of that stern line. “I won’t say a word, or make a sigh, or take a step, I swear,” she says, pressing a kiss to the other side of her mouth. She follows it with a soft kiss to the center of her lips, and a thrill rushes through her when she feels her lips turning upward in a smile under her own.

“You are impossible, Miss March.” Her tone is as fond as her accent is thick, and it makes Jo’s heart turn over in her chest in a funny sort of way. Jo leans in for another kiss, but finds herself pressing lips to fingertips as a hand is pressed to her mouth and she is gently pushed back. “Not now. I am _reading_.”

Jo groans, and flops over onto her back on the bed in truly dramatic fashion. “You torture me. How can someone who teaches literature be such a _slow_ reader?”

“We do not all read as if we are lost in the desert and the words on our pages are the first drops of water we have seen in days,” she replies calmly, turning a page as Jo turns her head to watch her.

Everything about her is the opposite of Jo. Where Jo is restless energy and an inability to sit still except when she is writing, she is still and quiet and able to sit calmly and lady-like and make conversation at the table. If life were fair, Jo thinks (but it is not), she would be a man and she would be a proper husband to this woman. Her calm serenity makes her think of her precious Beth. But she has Marmee’s heart and kindness, and quiet inner steel. She has Amy’s charm and poise and ability to talk herself out of any trouble, and she has Meg’s resilience and nurturing ways. But at the same time, she is so wholly _herself_ , so full of knowledge and passion and she is able to keep up with Jo’s whirlwind mind in a way that even Laurie never quite managed.

It’s all enough to make Jo’s heart ache and feel ready to burst as she looks up at her, watching her profile and the way her dark hair falls loose over her shoulders.

“What if you hate it?” Jo didn’t mean to say that. It just came out, and she’s a little horrified and terribly embarrassed, but she can’t take it back now. It’s part of their agreement: if one of them says something, they can’t pretend it wasn’t said. Words have power. Who knows that better than a writer and a teacher of literature?

“What if I do?” she asks mildly, though she does not lift her eyes from the manuscript in her lap.

Jo rolls over toward her, curling up to press her face against her, into the small of her back. “I will shred it, and toss it in the fire, and never write another word so long as I live.”

A hand touches her hip, caresses lightly down her thigh and back up in a comforting manner. “Yes, yes, I know,” she says in German. Jo is learning, slowly, to pick up some of the words and phrases that her beloved says. She doesn’t speak much German around others; only with Jo. She’s too proud of her English, and Jo remembers how embarrassed she was the first time she had to search for a word and in exhaustion switched to her first language mid-sentence. And she remembers how she lit up when Jo asked her to teach her, instead of teasing her. “My poor dramatic artist.”

“I’m not dramatic,” Jo pouts. “...Not like Amy.”

It earns her a laugh. “Hush, so that I can finish reading and find out whether you marry your Laurie.”

Jo rolls her eyes. “You already know that I don’t. Didn’t.”

Her hand continues petting her leg, as if she is a cat being soothed. “Yes, but I don’t know what _this_ Josephine March will do. This Josephine March did not serve in the War, like the Josephine March I know.”

Jo can feel her face coloring, and she’s fine with continuing to hide behind her back. “...There are some stories I don’t want to share with the world,” she says softly.

“I know, love,” comes the soft reply, accompanied by a squeeze of her hand on Jo’s thigh. “It was not a criticism. Even if you do give your father more credit than he deserves.”

Jo hums softly, thinking of the father she has and the father she wrote of. “Maybe I wrote the father I wanted,” she admits. “But I wrote Marmee true. And Beth. They’re the ones that matter the most.” She pauses, and asks, “Didn’t I?”

“They are perfect,” she assures her, then gives her behind a pinch, making Jo yelp and laugh. “Now _hush_ , and let me finish!”

Jo rolls away again, shaking her head, but she smiles. Maybe she did romanticize her father, but Marmee and Beth deserve every good thing she wrote about them and more. Amy will be angry with her, but they have long passed those difficult childish days. Amy is a brilliant painter, and a better wife for Laurie than Jo would ever have been.

Somehow, despite her anxiety and desperation to know what reaction she has to each and every page, Jo drifts off to sleep, dozing in their bed while the love of her life reads the book of her life.

When she wakes, it is to kisses being softly pressed to her forehead, her eyelids, her nose and cheekbones, and to her name being spoken softly in a precious German accent. She smiles and finds her lips to kiss her back before opening her eyes. The room is nearly dark, but it doesn’t hide the fact that her dark brown eyes are bloodshot and puffy.

Jo sits up quickly, taking her face in her hands. “You’ve been crying. Is it terrible? Of course it’s terrible, look at you. I’m so sorry, I never should have written it--”

She only stops talking when she is kissed, hard and bruising and fiercely. “Stop assuming the worst, Jo March,” she is told sternly. “Ask me what I thought. Don’t tell me what I thought.”

Jo blinks, confused, but slowly asks, “...What did you think?”

“It is beautiful,” she says softly, a smile on her mouth and tears swimming in her eyes again. “You have written a masterpiece, _meine liebe_. You have taken your heart and put it on paper, and the world will be lucky to read it and know you.”

Jo feels her face growing warm, and she ducks her head, looking at her lap. She is at a loss for words. It’s not a feeling she’s familiar with. She reaches for her hands, taking them in hers. “...My publisher told me that if I--she--Jo--didn’t get married in the end, they wouldn’t publish it. I’m sorry.”

Jo isn’t sure what she expected, but a laugh wasn’t it. She looks up, and that face she loves so dearly is watching her with amusement. “I am glad you did not marry Laurie.”

Jo rolls her eyes, laughing. “I told you! You knew I wouldn’t! He married my sister.”

“Yes, well. You have taken some creative license with the story, as we discussed.”

Jo smirks. “Maybe. But I think if I took _that_ particular creative license, Amy might take some serious issue.”

“Amy might not be the only one.”

Jo leans in and presses a soft kiss to her lips. “I never loved him the way I love you.”

Her eyes dance in amusement when she pulls back. “You mean the way you love _Friedrich_?”

Her tone is teasing, and Jo knows she is being playful, but her response is completely serious. “The way I love _Frieda_. I’m sorry. You know I--”

Frieda cuts her off with another kiss, this one longer and more intense somehow. “Hush, love. Are you _certain_ you want to use that name? Anyone who knows us--”

“I hope they do guess,” Jo declares fiercely, reaching up to cup Frieda’s face in her hands. “I want everyone to know how much I love you. How much I _need_ you. I never would have been brave enough to write that without you.”

Frieda just looks back at her for a long moment before she smiles. “I love you, Josephine March.”

“And I love you, Frieda Bhaer.”


End file.
